Spider Delays Vote Count In Rehoboth

REHOBOTH, Mass. It wasn’t hanging chads or voter fraud that delayed the vote count in one Massachusetts town — it was a spider.

Rehoboth Town Clerk Kathleen Conti says one of the town’s aging voting machines, which she’s been pressing to have replaced for several years, malfunctioned Tuesday morning.

She called a technician, who said a spider web apparently prevented the machine’s scanner from counting ballots. Conti says election workers stayed until 4 a.m. Wednesday to count nearly 500 ballots by hand.

“I can’t say enough good things about them, but I don’t have anything good to say about the spider,” Conti said.